ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Changes in human skull morphology across the agricultural transition are consistent with softer diets in preindustrial farming groups.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mechanical control in dental and jaw morphogenesis and remodeling.International journal of oral science · 2026Review
- Craniofacial morphology and its association with masseter and medial pterygoid muscle thickness among adults from a population-based sample.Clinical oral investigations · 2026Article
- Nasal Gracilization in Sri Lankan Indigenous Vedda: Phenotypic Plasticity and Evolutionary Continuity.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- The Co-Evolution of Sleep and Diet: Toward an Emerging Framework of Evolutionary Chrononutrition in Circadian-Metabolic Health.Nutrients · 2026Review
- A medieval skull from northern Kyushu: 3D geometric morphometric insights into Japanese craniofacial variation.Anatomical science international · 2026Article
- Evaluation and Comparison of Third Molar Agenesis Among Indian and Malaysian Subpopulations: A Retrospective Orthopantomographic Study.Clinical, cosmetic and investigational dentistry · 2026Article
- Coupling geometric morphometrics and machine learning for mandibular sex estimation in Late Pleistocene and Late Modern populations.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires?American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Review
- Early life functional transitions impact craniofacial morphology in osteogenesis imperfecta.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2025Article
- Comparative study of fetal facial shape between Japanese and North American populations using micro-CT.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Intracranial volume variation in Chinchorro mummies: a comparative study with pre-hispanic farmers and contemporary Chilean populations.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Long-term impacts of captivity on skull morphology and endocranial volume in a marsupial carnivore.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Bioclimatic and masticatory influences on human cranial diversity verified by analysis of 3D morphometric homologous models.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The level of protein in the maternal murine diet modulates the facial appearance of the offspring via mTORC1 signaling.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Factors influencing cranial variation between prehistoric Japanese forager populations.Archaeological and anthropological sciences · 2024Article
- Mapping sexual dimorphism signal in the human cranium.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mandibular morphology and the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Westernmost Iberia.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Exploring the Intricate Links between Adenotonsillar Hypertrophy, Mouth Breathing, and Craniofacial Development in Children with Sleep-Disordered Breathing: Unraveling the Vicious Cycle.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
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3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Agricultural foods and technologies are thought to have eased the mechanical demands of diet-how often or how hard one had to chew-in human populations worldwide. Some evidence suggests correspondingly worldwide changes in skull shape and form across the agricultural transition, although these changes have proved difficult to characterize at a global scale. Here, adapting a quantitative genetics mixed model for complex phenotypes, we quantify the influence of diet on global human skull shape and form. We detect modest directional differences between foragers and farmers. The effects are consistent with softer diets in preindustrial farming groups and are most pronounced and reliably directional when the farming class is limited to dairying populations. Diet effect magnitudes are relatively small, affirming the primary role of neutral evolutionary processes-genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow structured by population history and migrations-in shaping diversity in the human skull. The results also bring an additional perspective to the paradox of why
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